Friday, September 24, 2010

Blows your mind

He’s the champion of the avant-garde with his Cannes Film Festival winner about sexy catfish and laser-eyed monkeys.

Yet even as Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul confounds and challenges the mainstream with Uncle Boonmee Who Can Remember His Past Lives, a vivid fantasy of dreams and memories opening Thursday at Bell Lightbox, he prefers to make people laugh.

“For me, it's a comedy, a melancholy comedy,” said Weerasethakul, 40, whose name is roughly pronounced as Api-sha-tome Weera-seta-koon (he encourages people to call him “Joe,” his nickname).